SUNJEEV Sahota’s latest novel has come at the perfect time. While media pundits and political commentators debated whether they should be called refugees or migrants, thousands of people from war-torn and impoverished countries began to make their way into Europe this summer. These desperate men, women and children from (mainly) Syria, Afghanistan and Eritrea have withstood treacherous waters and humiliating treatment in search of sanctuary and a better future.

Fears were raised by what some saw as an alarming number of able-bodied young men among the asylum seekers. They claimed that the men were in fact being sent to form sleeper cells across the continent. In reality these young men are more akin to sacrificial lambs: sent far from home on an often perilous journey to a strange land where they must struggle to survive and also earn enough money to enable the rest of their families to follow in a much safer way.

Sahota’s novel is about three such young men — Tarlochan, Avtar and Randeep — who have “run away” from their native India because it is their and their families’ only option for a fighting chance at a better life. The three meet in a cramped, dilapidated house in Sheffield where they live with nine other Indian men in a similar situation. In another house in a different part of town lives a young woman named Narinder, who is Randeep’s visa-wife. The blurb on the dust jacket warns that “her story is the most surprising of all”, but from start to end it is Tarlochan who kept this reader in thrall.

Tarlochan was born a chamar (“untouchable”) who works as a labourer far away from his native Bihar. One day, he tells his supervisor that he must return home because his father has lost both his arms in an accident. Making the long journey back to his village on foot and by bus, he arrives home to find that all the money he had sent his father over the past four years is gone. The next morning he cuts crops in the fields, then walks miles to surrounding villages in search of work. Tarcholan never raises his voice, never gets angry, and he often gives half his roti to his younger brother insisting that he eat it instead. He labours endlessly to keep poverty at bay and over time is able to put together a respectable dowry for his sister. But when tragedy strikes his only thought is to flee the country.

Avtar is not a victim of the caste system, but he is stuck in the rut of the lower middle class with an average education, no contacts, and no means to help his family who live in a one-bedroom apartment with no bathroom.

“Go abroad. Follow the others. It’s too hard for boys like you in this benighted country. Abroad you might stand a chance”, a well-wisher advises him. He ends up selling an organ to help pay for a student visa. The trials that await Avtar remind one of an old Italian immigrant saying: “I came to America because I heard the streets were paved with gold. When I got here, I found out three things: First, the streets weren’t paved with gold; second, they weren’t paved at all: and third, I was expected to pave them.” Randeep is financially better off than the other two as his father is a civil servant and his mother is a socialite. But when his father loses his job due to ill health, Randeep works nights at a call centre to help support the family and pay his college tuition. Guileless and starved for emotional intimacy, he commits a crime for which he is expelled from his prestigious college. His mother, anxious to maintain appearances, encourages him to contract a paper marriage with British-born Narinder as a means of escape.

Narinder is an enigma. Born and raised in Croydon, she is a devoutly religious daughter raised in a conservative Sikh household. She wears a turban which covers her hair and the only times she leaves the house are to visit the close-by gurdwara to perform seva. Every year she travels to India to do seva among the poor. Her genuine goodness, though, becomes a burden, compelling her to do penance for a sin that she did not commit. By the end of the novel she begins to question the extent of her devotion, but still hesitates to take a chance at love.

Happiness is also a distant dream for the three migrant workers who live in squalid conditions and struggle to find jobs that pay them a fraction of the legal minimum wage at construction sites, factories, local chip shops, even cleaning gutters when there is nothing else available. Every month each must earn enough money to buy not only his own food, but also send an amount home to support his loved ones and make monthly payments to repay the loan that made possible his escape. Any month when there is less money the difference is made up by curtailing meals to one a day or even less. They sleep where they can, eat what and when they can. Even friendship is a luxury they can ill-afford as work opportunities are limited and police raids are a constant threat.

Gurpreet, a housemate who has toiled for over a decade as a migrant worker, sums up the struggle pithily: “This life it makes everything a competition. A fight. For work, for money. There’s no peace. Ever. Just fighting for the next job. Fight, fight, fight.” It is a far cry from a lazy life spent milking the benefits system that opponents of immigration imagine them to be enjoying.

A total of four characters who are Caucasian make fleeting appearances in the novel: a Punjabi-speaking construction foreman, an elderly call centre client, and two immigration officials assigned to confirm the authenticity of Randeep and Narinder’s marriage. The migrants live and work almost exclusively among apnay — members of the local desi community — who take advantage of the migrants’ desperation. The faujis (illegal refugees) especially have no real choice or legal recourse to better the situation. They do find that the apnay who were born and raised in the UK tend to be fairer and more open-minded than the rest.

But they are not open-minded enough to release Tarlochan from the stigma of caste, thereby forcing him to lie about his origins in order to find employment. To an outsider the family names Kapoor and Sandhu are no different from the family name Kumar but among apnay, just as in India, it can be a matter of life and death: “He could run. He should run. They didn’t know where he lived. But he hadn’t had his wages — he wasn’t working for nothing — and back at the house they were still laughing about it all. It filled his ears. The man had a big turban: obviously Indian-born, raised. It was reckless, asking for trouble. But he wasn’t going to run. Not anymore.”

At least three times during the reading of this otherwise engrossing narrative an eyebrow was raised due to perplexity. First when Randeep’s family lawyer named Harchand casually incorporates an “Inshallah” in his conversation with his Sikh clients, next when Tarlochan tells Randeep to “give my salaam” to his family, and lastly when it is mentioned that a gurdwara attendant is wearing a fashionable Pakistani men’s shalwar kameez.

It is flattering to imagine that Sahota is trying to connect with readers of Pakistani origin, but the truth is that he need not have any worry on that count. His writing speaks for itself: it is realistic, it is courageous and oftentimes it is heart-stopping. He has offered an intimate peek into the real, wretched lives of illegal migrant workers who live on the periphery of society and are especially vulnerable to various human rights violations and hazards. Whether it is the scene of a communal bloodbath in Bihar or the sense of naked desperation that shrouds the housemates in Sheffield, The Year of the Runaways is an unforgettable read.

The Year of the Runaways

(NOVEL)

By Sunjeev Sahota

Picador, UK

ISBN 978-1447241645

480pp.